Aunt Orange

The children's book author Elsa Beskow's most famous tale is probably Aunt Green, Aunt Brown and Aunt Lavender. However, the one aunt she left out of her little fairytale is Aunt Orange. Why, one may ask oneself? The reason is quite obvious, Aunty Orange didn't live back in the year of 1918. How do I know that...well it's because she's taking the same flight as I every Monday morning.

As I've been commuting back and forth to Stockholm for the last 3 years there are some faces on the flights that have become more familiar than others. One of these faces belongs to Aunt Orange. Why do I call her Aunt Orange??? The reason is quite simple, mostly she wears orange clothes and her hair is dyed orange (secondly I haven't got the faintest idea of who she is?). Don't get me wrong now, she's not the spitting image of a carrot, she's orange in a classy way.

She is one of the persons that has become my nodding friend, i.e. we never speak, we just nod in silent and mutual understanding. It's good to have a nodding friend, all of a sudden flying ain't so unpersonal.

To kill some time when waiting for departure I've played this little mind game called "Judge the book by its cover". As the name suggests it's the opposite to the old saying "Never judge the book by its cover". The rules are quite simple; create the life story of an unknown person based upon his/her physical appearance. Of course I've played this game with Aunty O as objective...

So who is Aunty when judging her by the cover? She's a successfull researcer within medicine in her mid 50's. Never been married. Plays flute in a folkband. She got promoted to senior researcher approx one year ago (this conclusion is based upon the fact that she used to fly coach together with me, but all of a sudden she started to fly business)...I could go on and on with the story of her life if it wasn't for one thing.

One morning I happened to to get a glimpse of some papers she was reading, and my story was crushed. Instead of reading some ground breaking medical reviews she was going through a pile of papers with a big bank's logo on them. All of sudden she wasn't this researcher that was about to come up with a cure for HIV, instead she became a common mortal that doesn't play the flute. But still, a common mortal all dressed in orange.

Thank you Aunt Orange for flying with me and making commuting much more personal.